If you hate Rob Ford, then thestar.com is the place to go for the most biased coverage I have ever seen of anybody.

I don’t count myself a fan of Rob Ford, but the immaturity of the Star, their obvious vendetta and horrible coverage of him in general made me go to Canada.com for my news months ago. Again, I don’t really care either way about Ford – he has good and bad ideas and good and bad ways of carrying them out…but I want my opinion of him to be my decision not some paper’s.

Hilarious really, blowing up non-stories of being ‘spotted’ on his cell phone while driving, calling police when there’s an intruder, having “the nerve” to brush off some idiot comic from some weak Canadian comedy show who arrived in his driveway at seven in the morning…whatever he does, The Star blasts him for it. Not to mention picking the fattest, red-faced pictures they can find for a given piece. Oh man, it was relentless. I had to go. I would link to some examples of this, but you can pretty much just go over there and click on the Rob Ford story of the day and see it for yourself.

I love thestar.com otherwise. I think their ease of browsing and depth of news coverage is perfect. So to get chased away from the site for a small issue like this should speak volumes. It’s okay to provide neutral coverage and allow intelligent readers to draw their own opinion of him.

/rant

The city of Toronto is trying to find ways to get extra cash and they are doing it via cuts. By ‘cuts’, of course, I mean cutting services and/or cutting staff. They are looking at stopping the daycare subsidies, and buying out 50,000 city workers.

Why?

Toronto property taxes are too cheap. Pickering property taxes are too expensive. Other cities around the GTA are somewhere in between. Increase property taxes. A lot. I’m serious, hit residents with it and keep all the services. In fact, up the services. The average Toronto home could take another $1900 in annual taxes before it gets in the neighborhood of a similar Oshawa home.

If the whiners in Toronto don’t like it, they can move. But it’s all about supply and demand and right now the demand to live in Toronto is high. The housing market sees it. The oil companies see it. Every industry sees it and as such the prices in Toronto are the highest in Canada. The taxes should be, too.

Raise the taxes and those who can’t afford to stay there will move away. This will then settle the housing market down. In the meantime, the extra $1900 per property would solve all of city council’s problems. All they need, as a collective, is a set of balls.

As soon as information started come out about the G20 security and talk of how to handle the protesters, as well as the request by authorities that they keep it peaceful, I could have written all future articles about it going forward a full year.

I knew what would happen. How could you not?

Whatever the police did, it would be overboard. Whatever the peaceful protesters had in mind, the prick protesters would ruin. They would take things too far, the police would react by being heavy-handed…things would build on both sides and the repercussions would create news stories for the next two years. Bingo, I nailed that one. Too bad I didn’t start this blog until after the fact.

Anyway, yawn. These stories bore me. The Star will continue to call the G20 policing a black eye, and everything that happened was inevitable. The police were not trained for such an extreme situation – and if they were trained for such an extreme situation, then some of the hardcore protesters would make it even more extreme until it gets to a point where the police are not trained to handle it.

Train them further.

Protest harder.

Train them further.

Protest harder.

It’s an endless cycle that the police can’t win. And never could. But it makes good news, right Star?

I have no doubt that he was one of those hard-working, brown-nosers in high school who answered all the questions, sucked up to the teachers, cleaned the blackboard, and still only managed a 75. He is a follower, not a leader. And his ideas are as shitty as his I.Q.

Tony Clement needed to be placated. For several years, he bugged and bugged Stephen Harper for things and finally, Harper relented on a pet project – the mandatory census for Stats Canada.

I’m not sure why there was a need to placate Mr. Clement. Perhaps he is in possession of some unsavory pictures, or a recording that must not be leaked. Whatever. The fact of the matter is, the census is now “voluntary”.

As a graduate of Statistics, I can tell you in no uncertain terms – this is just wrong. Stats Canada was considered elite in the field of statistics. All stats companies held that one in the highest regard. That is where the bar is set.

No more.

Data given on a voluntary basis is no better than an online poll. It’s a joke. And all of the precious data that so many businesses – big and small – rely on, will be gone. Future stats cannot be compared to past stats because one was collected in whole while the other was collected in part. What if most new (read: immigrants) Canadians refuse to partake, while most native Canadians do partake?

(which is a likely scenario)

Then the immigrants, whom this change is supposed to protect, are actually hurt the most due to poor representation.

This is stupid on every level and it alone is cause for me to not vote Conservative this time (however, I am right of center and don’t see any alternative).

But I blame one man for this. And you, Mr. Clement, are a clown. You can’t take back the damage that this does. It’s forever. Clown.

What a bunch of clowns.

I stick telemarketers into two categories…

Continue reading “Attention Telemarketers – it’s not 1986 anymore” →